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The Ups and Downs of the Hope Function In a Fruitless Search

On Bayesian updating of beliefs in sequentially searching a set of possibilities where failure is possible, such as waiting for a bus; the psychologically counterintuitive implication is that success on the next search increases even as the total probability of success decreases.

This transcript has been prepared from a scan of chapter 15, pages 353–377 in Subjective Probability 199430ya, edited by G. Wright & P. Ayton. All links are my own insertion; references have been inserted as footnotes at the first citation.

Note: to hide apparatus like the links, you can use reader-mode ().


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